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| Marie Bortolotto 2020 Body, like the mountain Heart, like the ocean Mind, like the sky - Dogen, Japanese Buddhist, poet, writer philosopher (1200-1253 AD) |
March 31, 2020
March 29, 2020
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| Marie Bortolotto 2020 Praise the mutilated world and the grey feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns. - Adam Zagajewski, 1945 - Polish poet, novelist, translator “Disdain for poetry (or any form of art) reveals an interesting cultural anxiety about the space for imagination in our lives… poetry is this space where every single particle of language is charged with the most meaning.” Quote by Bob Lerner, Author 1979 - |
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| Marie Bortolotto 2020 “I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don’t have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.” Quote by William Stafford, 1914 - 1993 American poet "Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady presence… Yet however it is brought into being, true concentration appears - paradoxically - at the moment willed effort drops away… At such moments, there may be some strong emotion present - feelings of joy, or even grief - but as often, in deep concentration, the self disappears. We seem to fall utterly into the object of our attention, or else vanish into attentiveness itself. This may explain why the creative is so often descried as impersonal and beyond self, as if inspiration were literally what its etymology implies, something “breathed in”. - from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield, 1953-, Poet, Translator, Author |
March 26, 2020
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| Marie Bortolotto 2020 In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood — A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks — is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is — Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind. |
February 28, 2020
February 23, 2020
February 17, 2020
January 21, 2020
January 1, 2020
December 30, 2019
December 26, 2019
December 20, 2019
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| Marie Bortolotto 2019 Don’t just stand there
with your hair turning grey,
Soon enough the seas will sink your little island. So while there is still the illusion of time set out for another shore. No sense packing a bag. You won’t be able to lift it into your boat. Give away all your collections. Take only new seeds and an old stick. Send out some prayers on the wind before you sail. Don’t be afraid. Someone knows you’re coming. An extra fish has been salted. - Mono (Sono) Santacroce (1928 - 1995) |
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